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Gems in the Web 11/8/13

As you navigate life, you, like all normal people, will need affirmation. You need someone to say, “Good job” or “Well done.” You need someone to notice you. Please know that the desire to be known and affirmed is not a bad one. And it is not a desire that you are likely to outgrow. However, if you look to the wrong people to affirm you, you are going to set yourself up for serious pain in life. Know that you are precious to God. He gave His own life for you. HE affirms you, and HE knows you. Others may make you feel good at times. Others may respond to you in ways that make you feel known. But earthly affirmation is always, at best, fleeting. Guard yourself from looking to others on earth to make you feel good about yourself. Your needs (and mine!) are way too deep for any human to satisfy.

Does Satan attack our strengths or our weaknesses? Does he try to destroy us where we’re strong or where we’re weak? For most Christians, it’s usually our weaknesses that the devil targets. But for Christian leaders it’s usually their strengths, the areas they’ve built ministries upon, the moral and spiritual qualities they are best known for promoting.

I am writing this to plead with Christian parents to require obedience of their children. I am moved to write this by watching young children pay no attention to their parents’ requests, with no consequences. Parents tell a child two or three times to sit or stop and come or go, and after the third disobedience, they laughingly bribe the child. This may or may not get the behavior desired.

It’s easier to blame biting criticism or flat out rudeness on slow thinking or tiredness, than it is to take personal responsibility for accidentally exposing how you really feel – whether or not it’s socially appropriate. Let’s just call it an editorial problem, one we meant to delete and instead let fly. That’s the beauty of writing, if I type out something obviously foolish, offensive, or bad, I can backspace a few times and it’s like it never happened. But with my mouth, there is no backspacing. My words have “gone to print” so-to-say, too late to retract. If only there were such a thing as verbal backspacing, a delete button for the words I regret publicizing.

Sure, take a look at your Facebook newsfeed and you’ll find that most of us can’t write coherently, or express a formed thought on any topic, but government education has still been enormously successful. Decipher these ramblings and what do you find? Not much, and that’s the point. Score one for Government Education. Now try this: write something really outside of the mainstream box. Write something that questions our cultural values and societal priorities. Post it, and see what happens. The trolls came out of the ground like Lord of the Rings to viciously attack, probably wishing death and destruction upon you, right? Score two for Government Education.

I’m with you! I had to get rid of Facebook; I was always mad at those, um, people on there. It’s my nature to “speak” what I believe. Unfortunately, you can’t do that on FB unless you agree with the “normal” people. Apparently, I’m not normal (I was homeschooled)… But, I already knew that! lol